The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that the annual direct hospital costs of treating healthcare-associated infections in the United States range from $35.7B to $45B. The most frequent nosocomial infections are surgical site infections, hepatitis B virus infections, septicemia, gastroenteritis, hepatitis C virus infections, urinary tract infections, and meningitis. Microbial agents responsible for these infections include Acinetobacter, Burkholderia cepacia, Clostridium difficile, Clostridium sordellii, Enterobacteriaceae, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, human immunodeficiency virus, influenza viruses, Klebsiella, Staphylococcus aureus Mycobacterium abscessus, norovirus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci.
While certain novel features of this disclosure shown and described below are pointed out in the claims, the disclosure is not intended to be limited to the details specified, since a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art will understand that various omissions, modifications, substitutions and changes in the forms and details of the disclosure illustrated and in its operation may be made without departing in any way from the spirit of the present disclosure. No feature of the disclosure is critical or essential unless it is expressly stated as being “critical” or “essential.”